


we have eternity to love the dead

by CptSacredSaxon



Series: We Lived In a Time of Bronze [2]
Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Ancient History RPF, The Iliad - Homer
Genre: F/M, M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:33:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22597120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CptSacredSaxon/pseuds/CptSacredSaxon
Summary: She looked out over the sea of brightly coloured banners, sunlight glittering off the wide array of weapons and armour, and remembered when spears were tipped with bronze.In a world where Alexander the Great and his beloved general Hephaestion are the reincarnated Achilles and Patroclus, Hector and Andromache are also reincarnated as their counterparts, Darius III and his wife Stateira of Persia. As Alexander takes his campaign to the same land Achilles once fought in, it seems the Trojan War - and all its tragedy - is doomed to play out again.(Andromache/Stateira POV)
Relationships: Achilles/Patroclus of Opus (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Alexandros III of Macedon | Alexander the Great/Hephaistion of Macedon, Andromache/Hector (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Darius III of Persia/Stateira I of Persia
Series: We Lived In a Time of Bronze [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1449415
Comments: 7
Kudos: 21





	we have eternity to love the dead

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Sophocle's Antigone (circa line 60/70).
> 
> Quick refresher: Darius III was king of a newly united Persia when Alexander took his campaign to Anatolia. Stateira was Darius' wife and mother of his daughters Stateira II (also known as Barsine, which is what I used in this fic to try avoid any confusion) and Drypetis. Sisygambis was the mother of Darius.  
> Following the Battle of Issus in 333 BC, the Persian royal caravan was captured by the Macedonian-Greek forces. According to Plutarch ( _Alexander_ 21-22) and Arrian ( _Anabasis_ 4.20.1-2), they were treated with great respect by Alexander, who apparently also became close friends with Sisygambis.
> 
> Enjoy!

Andromache of high-gated Thebes had been the uncrowned queen of a city that ruled in the time of earth-bound gods and bronze heroes. She had watched and suffered through the greatest war their land had ever seen, the war that ended the golden age of legend.

~

Stateira I was the Achaemenid queen of the Persian Empire, whose nation held more people and more land than the horizon could cover. Her language had changed, her family had changed, her home had changed, but not the rippling surface of the pool water nor a thousand years in the underworld had changed the face reflected back at her.

~0~

Andromache had seven brothers. Eeiton had declared that his daughter would learn to fight and to kill, just as his sons would learn what it was to raise a child. Priam had once asked him why, and Eeiton said, ‘So they can rule.’ Andromache remembered how he had soothed her concerns that the Trojans would think badly of the callouses on her fingers, as much from the pull of the bowstring as from the working of the loom. ‘The Argives denounce archery as cowardly and emasculating,’ Eeiton told her, watching her as arrow after arrow flew to the target, striking its straw heart. ‘They are the rivals of Troy.’ _Ilium_ , she thought, and wondered if a city could be divine.

Stateira’s fingers glittered with jewelled rings. She lived in palaces grand beyond imagining, wore the finest cloths, the most precious of gems, surrounded by luxury. They ate delicacies with their hands, sprawled on vibrantly coloured cushion. If something needed cutting, a servant would perform the action. A queen did not need to wield a blade.

Some nights Stateira dreamt of the night Troy fell, when Andromache had seen her city sacked and burnt. She dreamt of running through the halls, Astyanax clutched to her chest as she tried to fight off the monster-faced Argives, but in her nightmares she fumbled her bow, palms slick with food grease instead of blood, and a laughing figure wrenched Astyanax from her grip. Stateira tried to hold on to him, grasping at his clothes, but the silk thread tore.

~0~

Andromache sat tall and proud upon her horse when the Trojan riders reached Hypoplakia. She did not care that brides were normally sent off on ships with billowing sails, hull full of dowry. Andromache was unashamed of her skill – she was as good a rider as any of her brothers. The prince of Troy was a horse tamer, everyone said so, and Troy was the richest city in all Asia. Priam had not turned to Eeiton because he wanted a wealthy bride or a beautiful wife for his son. Hector needed a queen. 

~

Stateira walked less than the length of a corridor on her wedding day. She was carried through the procession on a litter covered in gold leaf and studded with gems. She stood at the altar, hands clasped with Darius as streams of incense spun around her and the priests sang hymns to the thousands watching below. The litter that carried her and her newly wedded husband back through the promenade was even grander, as elephants trumpeted their coming and dozens of brightly coloured songbirds were released into the air above their heads to the cheering of the crowds. Darius carried her the rest of the way to their bed and she kissed him for the first time in a thousand years, pushing him down onto to the mattress where she rode him as hard as Andromache ever had. His beard was closer shaved, his robes were luxury woven in silk, and in this life, Hector was crowned as king, not prince.

~0~

Andromache had not seen Hector ride off to war, leaving a column of dust in his wake. When her husband went to war, she could stand high on the gates of Troy and watch him do battle. She could hear the screams of anguish from the companions of those he’d slain. She could see the sincerity of his expression when he asked Achilles to honour the funerary rites, heard the clash of their spears and their swords. When the son of Peleus dragged Hector’s corpse thrice round Troy, Andromache looked away.

Cassandra said the Achaeans would come back, but Andromache did not want to listen. She rocked Astyanax gently as Hecuba cried into her lap.

~

Stateira refused to watch Darius march away from her. It didn’t matter that it was one of the finest forces ever assembled. Nor that the troops and warriors numbered in their hundreds of thousands, arriving from every corner of the vast Persian empire. All she saw was the Trojan army waiting on the beach beneath their city walls. Stateira looked out over the sea of brightly coloured banners, sunlight glittering off the wide array of weapons and armour, and remembered when spears were tipped with bronze. When Darius went to war, Stateira followed, and a full royal caravan train followed the army out of the city when the Macedonian-Greeks invaded. When battle cries rang out at Issus, Stateira soothed her daughter’s worries, stroking Barsine’s hair with one hand, and Sisygambis’ hand gripped tightly in the other.

~0~

Andromache had seen the face of Patroclus on the plains below Troy; she had seen it frowning when the leaders met in their failed talks of truce, she had seen it cheer when their champions met for single combat, seen contorted in vicious battle cries. Like the rest of them, she hadn’t expected it to be his body that thumped lifeless to the ground when Hector battled the warrior that wore Achilles armour. Hector’s face was ashen that night. ‘He died bravely,’ Hector whispered in the dark, ‘He died with conviction and all I can think is how much I detest this war.’

Andromache had seen Achilles too, his pretty face soured by rage, vindictive and ugly as he gloated over the slain Hector with no trace of respect. She saw it later, like a spectre risen from Hades, a distortion of the beauty of the father reflected in the son, when Neoptolemus laughed as she was dragged on board his ship.

~

Stateira watched with bated breath as their conquerors entered camp. It was not the rampaging frenzy of pillage Andromache remembered from Troy, but it was defeat and capture none the less. She wanted to weep, to curse the gods, that here they were once again, Persian or Trojan, they always seemed doomed to be prisoners of the Greeks. Instead, when the soldiers entered their tent, politely informing them that they were to be treated as honoured guests, Stateira laughed bitterly. _Alexander_ , they said. _Paris_ , she thought, but it was not that snivelling twice-named prince who tormented her in both lives.

Stateira wrapped herself in veils when they were paraded in front of Alexander and the Macedonian army, out of fear or disgust she could not say. Alexander was older than Achilles had ever been, and he stubbornly refused to look at the captive wife of his enemy. She looked at the face his second-in-command bore, unsurprised. Patroclus never left Achilles’ side; not then, as a Myrmidon warrior, not now, as a Macedonian general.

~0~

Andromache had run out of tears as she stood ankle deep in the sea, hands bound before her as she waited to be marched on board the Greek ships. She had not wanted to, felt the ruin of Troy deserved endless crying, that they should weep until the plains flooded and the smouldering remains were drowned in her pain. But the smoke-filled air had dried her eyes, scorched her throat, and all she felt was a horrifying numbness.

Talthybius, that wretched Achaean herald, had brought them news of their future, gloating at their plight. Polyxena was to be sacrificed in parody of Iphigenia, Cassandra was picked from the crowd by a leering Agamemnon, and Hecuba was selected by Odysseus amidst scathing laughter. Neoptolemus, with the red fluff of adolescence dusting his lip, had claimed Andromache as his prize, crowing that he would take the widow of the man his father had killed.

Polyxena, her cheeks still round in the last vestiges of a childhood she would never outgrow, walked to the altar with her head held high, the youngest daughter of Priam regal even as her throat was slit. Cassandra danced in wild frenzy up the ship plank. ‘Let me be wed to my bridegroom in Hades!’ She laughed gaily, all but run onto Agamemnon’s ship, behaving as mad as she had always been called, giggling with the promise of his death. Hecuba ignored the jeers of the manky Achaean soldiers and brushed away Odysseus’ promise of fair treatment with a brittle laugh. ‘I will not suffer to wither under the roof of your pity,’ she said, her eyes flashing like her prophetic daughter’s. 

Andromache looked out over the cowed herds of Trojan slaves, to be taken to Greece or sold in the ports once loyal to Troy. Enslaved, humiliated, leaderless. She looked and saw a future of herself as clear as if Apollo himself had sent it. Grey and wrinkled, worked to the bone in a foreign land, the surviving refugees of Troy scratching out a bleak living in strange mountains. _We will be nothing of ourselves_ , Cassandra had said when the war began. _But you must not leave us as orphans_. _You must be our queen._

Hecuba placed a hand on her cheek and told her to live.

‘I don’t know if I can,’ Andromache croaked.

‘You will,’ Hecuba said firmly.

~

Stateira waited with bated breath as the Greeks swarmed around them, making this land their own. When a man entered her tent later that evening, she was not shocked to see the face of the man Hector had slain appear from the gloom.

‘You remember, don’t you?’ Hephaestion asked when the servants had left, a question in a language long forgotten, his tongue clumsy and unpractised with the words.

‘Of course I do,’ she replied after a moment, ‘the Fates are cruel like that.’ Silence returned. What was there to say? A thousand years to see a lovers’ face again, a thousand years for the same men to tear you apart again. What could be said across eons, across hate? To live again, so far away, was not enough to bring companionship with the people who had sent you to death.

He sat down across from her. Hephaestion had more stubble than Patroclus, seemed taller and broader; like Alexander, he bore more scars and wrinkles than Homer’s heroes had. Hephaestion was grown, Stateira thought. His eyes held a depth of maturity Andromache would not have suspected, and that Stateira did not want to appreciate.

There was no use to pretend that they did not recognise who they were. ‘Does Darius…?’ Hephaestion trailed off.

Stateira snorted, ‘Don’t make me repeat myself.’ It was answer enough. She had seen in Darius’ eyes sometimes, when he woke with dawn light spilling over his face, like a half-remembered dream. But Darius did not remember Hector, and Stateira had never cared enough to decide if it was a kindness. ‘What of Alexander?’ She asked finally, dreading either answer.

Hephaestion shook his head. She couldn’t decide if there was pain in his eyes, but she did not think so. Stateira realised that Hephaestion, too, knew that whatever joy remembrance could bring would be severely tempered by pain and guilt, the same for Alexander as for Darius. But she was not ready to part with her anger just yet.

‘Are you sure?’ Stateira snarled, ‘The heralds have told how you both went to worship at your shrines at Hissarlik.’

Hephaestion sighed, ‘That’s how I know that Alexander doesn’t remember. Achilles did not worship himself.’

‘You have invaded our lands! Did the first victory not count because you were both dead to see it?!’

‘Achilles wanted to go home,’ Hephaestion said, calmly for all the force of his tone. ‘Do not mistake this campaign for some unconscious memory of Agamemnon’s orders. This isn’t about Troy. Alexander wants what is best for the world.’ Hephaestion paused for a moment. ‘I know that you do not trust or believe his promises, but they are true. We mean you no harm.’

Stateira collapsed back into her chair, suddenly exhausted. She thought of the cultures they had lived in, where war was thought the only way young men could show their worth to the world. She remembered the golden curls of Paris’ bride, how tired her expression when Andromache had finally seen Helen’s face. She recalled the words of Peleus, about how the Myrmidons had not cared about Menelaus’ bruised honour; but that they had cared about being on the correct side of Agamemnon’s fury. She turned back to the warrior-veteran across from her, looked into brown eyes and saw the boy that had only ever really wanted to live at the side of his lover. Stateira sighed, ‘You never did.’

**Author's Note:**

> Yay! Hope you enjoyed :)  
> Otherwise:  
> \- Andromache is from Cilician Thebes (also known as Hypoplakian Thebes) which was located on the coast of Asia Minor and is different to the Greek 'seven-gated' Thebes and Egyptian 'hundred-gated' Thebes. That's right - there's three Thebes!  
> \- Paris was also known as Alexandros, which seems kind of ironic that the guy that actively acted as if he WAS Achilles also shared that name  
> \- Neoptolemus was the son of Achilles and Deidamia of Skyros. Either him or Odysseus killed Astyanax (son of Hector and Andromache), and I like Odysseus, so in this fic, it was Neoptolemus  
> \- the scene on the beach of Troy was inspired by Euripides' _Trojan Women_ , which I highly recommend!  
> \- good ol Cassandra, always knows what's happening/will happen  
> \- Agamemnon sucks and yes I will bash him even if he's not actually _in_ the fic
> 
> Any questions please feel free to hit me up in the comments. I have no idea when the next chapter will be ready - it's up to the Muses!


End file.
